Photos and text used with permission and courtesy of Heritage Rare Coin Auctions

Description:The rare so-called “Cheerios” variety, made from a prototype (some would say pattern) reverse hub with fine detail on the eagle’s tail feathers. The regular issue Sacagawea dollar has smooth tail feathers. All known examples of this variety (except for a few gold pieces that took a trip on the space shuttle) have come from Cheerios cereal boxes, which helped the U.S. Mint promote the new Sacagawea mini-dollar. Only one in a hundred of the boxes contained a dollar coin.

The coin above was recently auctioned by Heritage in the March Phoenix, AZ (ANA) Signature Auction #1102 lot # 1274 for the record price of $23,000

NGC announced the “discovery” coin in this 6/22/2005 article;

“NGC Certifies Pattern Sacagawea Dollar”

On Monday, June 20, 2005, NGC certified a pattern 2000-P Sacagawea Dollar struck from dies made with experimental hubs. While similar to the final design, the reverse’s eagle device shows considerably greater detail than that seen on circulation and proof issues struck from the adopted dies and is very easy to identify. The story of this coin is emerging as one of the most fascinating numismatic discoveries to come to light in some time, as this coin can be distinguished from virtually every other pattern coin of the twentieth century in an important way – a relatively large number of 5,500 were produced and then dispersed through non-numismatic channels.

The tale begins with a marketing campaign that sought to promote the re-issuance and redesign of the dollar coin. The US Mint undertook a mass market media blitz. They popularly dubbed the coin the “golden dollar” and partnered with many companies to raise awareness of the new coin. Although primarily a millennium celebration, one such promotion was conducted with General Mills. A single example of the first 10,000,000 Lincoln cents struck bearing the date 2000 was included inside every marked box of Cheerios that year. One in every 2000 boxes included a cent coin and a Sacagawea Dollar. According to a General Mills promotional release, “during the month of January, the only place to get either coin [was] in a box of Cheerios.” We know this is true statement regarding the Sacagawea Dollar, as it was not released to Federal Reserve Banks until January 26, 2000, and Wal-Mart (another company participating in promotional distribution) did not release them until January 30, 2000. (more…)